The Force (advertisement)
viral video advertisement

The Force is a television advertisement created by Deutsch Inc. to promote Volkswagen's Passat.
Commercial
Volkswagen had not aired a commercial during the Super Bowl in more than 10 years. In 2011, the company ran two ads, both from advertising agency Deutsch. The other was called "Black Beetle".
The advertisement for the 2012 Volkswagen Passat features a young boy (played by Max Page) in full Darth Vader regalia attempting to use the Force to start a washing machine and a clothes dryer, and to wake the dog and a doll. After he is unsuccessful in those attempts, he is startled to discover that he can start the car, though his father does it using a remote control.
The film was directed by Lance Acord and produced by Park Pictures featuring the musical track "Imperial March" composed by John Williams.
Actors
Max Page had never seen any of the Star Wars films, saying he was too scared. He met James Earl Jones, the voice of Vader in the Star Wars films, in New York City on 7 February.
The public source identifies “The Force (advertisement)” as viral video advertisement. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Force, advertisement and viral.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7734750. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Force (advertisement)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.